SCHOOLS, leisure centres and public toilets are among more than 1,000 council-owned buildings in North Wales which contain asbestos.

A Freedom of Information request by the Daily Post has revealed that all types of the dangerous substance which is now illegal to use – are found in buildings across the region including the most hazardous material, crocidolite.

The figures showed Gwynedd to have the highest number of buildings containing asbestos with 409 in total, which included Arfon Leisure Centre in Caernarfon, Bangor Swimming Pool and Hafod Y Gest care home in Porthmadog.

Asbestos, known as the silent killer, is regularly the subject of health and safety campaigns – so an FOI which reveals that the majority of council buildings in an area contained asbestos, although often in non-dangerous uses, has the potential to make waves.

I’ve seen a few stories about those behind bars using Facebook to taunt victims, witnesses and so on – but this is the first time I’ve seen FOI used to find out how many Facebook accounts have been investigated by prison authorities.

A good example of why ‘open data’ will never give the public as much power as the right to ask for information. This FOI asked how many deaths in the workplace had been recorded by the Health and Safety Executive in the Bradford area, and the number of injuries recorded. The amount of detail per case varied.

If you saw the national newspapers or TV news on Saturday, then you’ll know that The New Year Honours were somewhat dominated by Olympians. And why not? 2012, after all, is a year which will be remembered for sport.

Sure, we’ve seen FOI requests about the number of reports of racism recorded by schools or local authorities – but this is the first time I’ve seen a figure for the number of times police have been called in to investigate racism in schools. That’s what the Western Morning News uncovered.

Wirral Council has spent more than £1m sponsoring football team Tranmere Rovers over the last decade, according to information released under Freedom of Information laws to the Liverpool Echo. I suspect a lot of councils have spent a fair bit over the years – Lancashire County Council’s logo has been almost ever-present at Preston North End – but I suppose it depends on what the money was spent on which makes or breaks the story.

A fortnightly round-up of FOI-based stories which could be followed up anywhere…

POSSESSING explosives, being drunk while in charge of a child, death by reckless driving and indecent assault on a girl . . these are just some of the serious criminal convictions would-be teachers in the North have under their belt.

Hundreds of potential teachers have been applying for classroom positions across the region despite holding a range of serious criminal convictions, the Sunday Sun can reveal.

Information released by the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB), after the Sunday Sun made a Freedom of Information Act request, revealed the scale of convictions clocked up by teachers applying for positions in the North.

Here’s one which could run and run across the country. The Stoke Sentinel reports on the findings of a council ‘neighbourhood renewal assessment’ – the likes of which are carried out by councils all over the place.

A NEW report has painted a sobering picture of just how bad living conditions have become in the Portland Street area.

The report, released under the Freedom of Information Act, shows how much conditions have deteriorated at some of the houses.

It is based on surveys carried out at 274 properties, a mixture of private rented and owner-occupied homes, as part of the council’s Neighbourhood Renewal Assessment.

I think there’s a better story in here other than the one the South Wales Evening Post has gone with. It reports on the £5k in compensation the police has paid out for repairs to properties which were damaged during ‘negative warrants’ – ie warrants which were executed but didn’t lead to an arrest or seizure of goods. That’s a good story – but looking at the breakdown of negative v positive warrants, almost half were negative. A better story?

Here’s a curious story. FOI led to the Boston Standard to find out that 120 people had ‘foreign bodies’ removed from them in hospital, yet the hospital couldn’t say what those objects were. The Standard used information from elsewhere in the country to talk about the sorts of objects which could be involved.

This story stands out more because of the level of detail released than anything else:

SCARBOROUGH’S NHS Trust is owed more than £30,000 in hospital bills, racked up by overseas patients not entitled to free treatment.

The figures, obtained via a Freedom of Information request to Scarborough and North East Yorkshire Healthcare NHS Trust, show that since February 2009, £33,229.41 has either been written off or is currently being chased by the Trust.

The numbers include £10,297 that the trust is still chasing from a Syrian patient who underwent treatment in May 2010.

The highest amount written off was for £5,701, owed to them from a Thai patient who underwent treatment in August and September of 2009.

A schoolgirl who was burnt when baked beans were spilled on her could be in line for a council pay-out of up to £12,000.

The hot food was spilled on the youngster’s neck at a county council-run school. The authority has now set aside thousands of pounds to cover potential compensation and legal costs.

The incident is one of 63 compensation claims made for injuries sustained at county schools during the past four years, according to new figures. But, of the 29 cases dealt with to date, just five have resulted in a compensation pay-out.

This FOI from the Burnley Express really impressed me because it illustrates brilliantly how FOI can be used to paint a fuller picture than an organisation would otherwise seek to reveal. Lancashire Care NHS Trust, the mental health trust for Lancashire, plans to end all in-patient mental health care at Burnley General Hospital. Some patients will be moved to Preston – around a 60 to 70 mile round trip – and in 2014, dementia care will move to a site near Blackpool, almost a 100-mile round trip.

The trust argues it is about improving services for patients – but how many patients will be affected? That was the nub of the Express FOI, which is well explained in the article because it does what few FOI articles do – revealing what questions they asked before going into the answers.

Figures for the final six months of last year show the three wards in Burnley and the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit were very busy. The PICU ward was 91.2% full, two of the others were at full or over full, at 99% and 102%, and the third was 56% full.

According to the Trust, 472 teenagers have been admitted to the PICU ward in the last five years. 489 patients were admitted with dementia.

The new Blackpool development, a car boot sale site at Wyndyke Farm, off Preston New Road, is expected to open in 2014. Its 30 dementia and 16 PICU beds will serve the whole of Lancashire. The Trust says it is reducing dementia care in hospital because of developments in community services.

The numbers rather suggest that there won’t be enough beds, and those that there are will be up to 50 miles away. The numbers from the FOI request show, if nothing else, that there’s no numerical reason for closing the wards. Change for change sake?

Here’s a good example of FOI enabling residents to hold a council to account. The Kidderminster Shuttle probably covered the launch of the local council’s crackdown on dog poo – I imagine it warranted a press release. Shame, then, that a year on, and FOI reveals little action materialised.

When an illegal gypsy camp appears near someone’s house, the council is normal the first place that person calls for help. The Burton Mail used FOI to find out how many such camps had been reported in the last three years in their area – almost 100.

Parking tickets are often the subject of FOI requests – but here’s a different take on how to do it. The Birmingham Post used FOI to find out how many more tickets had been issued following the extension of parking rules to cover evenings and Sundays. The number of tickets issued has risen 74% – a nice little earner some might say.

The coalition government promised that frontline police officers would not be cut as police budgets were reduced. That doesn’t appear to be the case in Calderdale, where the Halifax Courier used FOI to reveal where the cuts were falling.

I’ve seen loads of councils runs competitions with prizes and thought to myself ‘that’s probably a waste of money’ but I’ve never thought of suggesting it as an FOI and aggregating the results though. Wales On Sunday have though – and it does ask some questions.

Here’s a clever idea from the Wigan Evening Post – start asking local authorities how many members of staff earn less than the Living Wage – a figure calculated by the the Living Wage Unit to reflect the actual cost of living, rather than just the minimum wage. At Wigan Council, one in five earn less than £7.20.

Among the many FOI stories you see about crime stats, it’s not often you come across one about car crime, but this article from the Cambridge News is worth a look – it breaks car crime down by ward. Is car crime important? Probably to those in the hotspot area, it is.

I don’t normally include FOI stories which begin life on a press release, but this one was particularly well-timed from Autoglass, the windscreen repair people. It lists the number of missile attacks on cars by police force, timely given the spate of concrete throwing which has made the front pages.

There are 67 cases before or recently dealt with by employment tribunal involving Bradford Council staff. Two resulted in combined payouts of £100,000. A sign of a good employer or a bad one? The number being settled out of court suggests we’ll never know.

Proof of the value of FOI disclosure logs – for journalists anyway. The BBC reports on seven police officers from West Mercia Police disciplined for racism. The BBC, which used the infamous ‘BBC has learnt’ in the intro, confirms later in the piece it found the information on West Mercia’s disclosure log.

When doing FOI Friday, I try and pick FOI stories which can be replicated elsewhere. Based on that criteria, including this story from The Guardian seems a bit odd. Basically, the Guardian got hold of court emails which encouraged magistrates to direct riot-related offences to crown court for sentence. The reason I’ve included it is because it demonstrates just how powerful FOI can be if you go beyond numbers and ask for documents. Emails can be a rich source of stories – from memos directing traffic wardens where to target for parking through to stuff like this.

There’s something particularly good about this use of FOI. Yes, it’s about hospital admissions relating to drink, but it’s just so thorough. The Sunday Sun reveals how the number of admissions to hospital for alcohol-related matters have rocketed in five years. But they also asked for age-group breakdown – those in their 40s and 50s are the biggest group – the youngest admissions, and a breakout for cases treated in A&E alone. Good stuff.

Kicking off with a story which may not have been sourced under FOI, but which could be: The Liverpool ECHO reports on the number of properties which have been licensed for use as ‘houses of multiple occupancy’, of which just 25% had planning permission? Why is this an issue? Well, if it’s on your street, you’d want to be able protest about it, wouldn’t you?

Some interesting numbers from the Wigan Evening Post, which reports, thanks to FOI, that over the past four years, Wigan Council has spent £200,000 on B&B accommodation for homeless people. A problem that’s getting worse in recession times? Apparently not – but what’s the picture elsewhere?